Geneva
Those wishing to have a complete picture of the Nazi anti-Jewish activities in Danzig, should carefully examine the petition which the Jews of Danzig submitted to the League of Nations Council and which has been made public here as part of the minutes of the session of the Council.
The petition points out that since the government of the Free City was taken over by the National Socialist majority, and especially of late, the Danzig Constitution, which guarantees all citizens unrestricted equality of rights, and the Polish-Danzig Convention of November 9, 1920, which secures to all inhabitants of Danzig, irrespective of their language or religion, equal status before the law and the full enjoyment of all citizenship and political rights, are being visibly infringed and ignored in respect to the Jews in all spheres of public life.
LISTS DISCRIMINATIONS
The discrimination against the Jews solely because of their origin, finds expression in all spheres of public life; in legislation, in the “Aryan Paragraph” that is disguised in other words, directed against Jewish officials, judges, notaries, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, dentists and teachers.
In administrative practice, this discrimination expresses itself even more definitely in all activities affecting citizen life: (a) The police do not uphold public order, security and peace where this basic law is infringed against Jews; (b) The few Jewish officials employed in the Municipal Administration have been dismissed by actions constituting breaches of the Constitution; and (c) Similar anti-constitutional treatment is meted out to the Jewish professors, teachers and students in all public educational institutions, to Jewish artists and to Jewish actors, Jewish doctors, pharmacists and dentists are boycotted in the most diverse fashion, and this is not only tolerated by the authorities, but quite openly encouraged. The same thing is happening in the judiciary.
ROLE OF THE SENATE
In economic life everything is done to ruin the Jewish merchant class, by boycott, the refusal of State tenders, etc.
The Senate has rejected all petitions for protection against boycott and defamation, though the fundamental rights proclaimed in the Constitution guaranteeing the equality of rights of all citizens calls for such legal measures to be taken by the government under such circumstances. The same fate attends Jews employed in commerce, and private officials.
The petition points out that the position of the Jews of Danzig since the National Socialist government cannot be reconciled with human dignity and with the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and the Polish-Danzig Convention. The Jews are denied in the Danzig State, it says, the equality of rights to which they are entitled equally with the rest of the Danzig citizens.
Nevertheless, the petition proceeds, the representative bodies of Danzig Jewry hesitated for a long time before they finally felt compelled to present a petition to the League of Nations. The Jews are always prepared to adjust them selves to the government and the laws of the State, even when these support conceptions which are alien to the Jews, it declares. Only in the extreme event when the intensity of persecution and oppression have become intolerable, they have decided to lodge a complaint against the government of their State.
WHAT PETITION ASKS
The petition asks the League of Nations to require the Senate of the Free City of Danzig to: (1) Repeal all laws and decrees whose anti-constitutional character is demonstrated in the petition; (2) Demand of the Senate that it should alter its administrative practice to make amends for all discriminations to which the Danzig Jews have been subjected and to make it impossible for new discriminations to take their place; (3) To demand of the Senate that all citizens, including Jews, should ze given adequate protection against all defamation; (4) To demand of the Senate that the boycott carried on against the Danzig Jews should be firmly prohibited, if necessary, by legal regulations.
GOVERNMENT’S REPLY
The Senate of the Free City of Danzig in its observations accompanying the petition, which run to twenty folio pages, argues that the position of the Jews in Danzig corresponds in every respect with that guaranteed to them in the Constitution and the Polish-Danzig Convention.
It is not denied, says the government, that the position of the Jews has at the moment grown a little worse, but this is in no way the result of infringement of the Constitution or of the provisions of the Polish-Danzig Convention, but is the result of the attitude adopted by the population, which in consequence of a new moral and political conception has turned away from the Jewish elements.
OBLIGATIONS MET
It cannot be the duty of the government to influence, or to combat this attitude of the population. The government has carried out its obligations with regard to the Danzig Jews and will continue to fulfil them in the future. It believes, however, that the attitude of the population in respect to the Jewish element will not improve when the great mass of public opinion will learn what it has not previously known, that the Jews have made use of the right of petition, which they are not prohibited from doing and is not contested. The government must therefore deplore that this petition has been presented.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
